FTII Under Threat Of Privatization
By Saumyananda Sahi & Ruchir arun
15 November, 2010
Ftiistudentsbody.blogspot.com
Letters by Students of FTII to the Minister (I&B)
1)
TO:
Ambika Soni, the Minister
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting
The Government of India
15th November 2010
Dear Madam,
As a student of the Film and Television Institute of India I wish to express my growing concern about the present state of affairs here as well as the future of the potential and heritage this space embodies.
Your recent policy decisions and general apathy towards the institute seems to point to a lack of value in cinema and the arts in general as an important aspect of our culture. This Institute was founded under the Neheruvian idea of nation building, but now with spreading virus of capitalism even education seems to have become a tradable commodity, something you want to make self-reliant and even profit making! It is alarming to think of parents having children and expecting them to walk, talk and earn money for the household from their very conception! What are parents there for then?
I would like to ask you: Why is the responsibility of the state to nurture learning and creative expression being shirked through efforts to disinvest and hand over this premier institute to private public partnerships? Why has a multinational private company like Hewitt Associates, who have no experience in the arts, been employed on tax payers money to make a report and even have a hand in the molding the future of an institute that is, though sadly not acknowledged as such, of national importance?
By increasing the fees you are curbing the potentialities of so many creative minds who come from humbler backgrounds and cannot afford it. Even if you are starting short term courses which are ‘profit-making’ to subsidize the main streams of the film course, who are you intending these courses for then? Why do you even consider opening courses such as computer gaming in one of the two only government institutes in the country dedicated to the art and craft of cinema? Why can you not open another institute somewhere else to do this?
The creation of a film needs space, necessary equipment and time, all of which would be seriously infringed if there is an overpopulation of students all relying on the same hardly sufficient infrastructure. Why do you subvert all these concerns with the bizarre promise of making the institute a ‘global film school’? In your own ministry website, which incidentally has not been updated for more than three years, you advertise the institute as having produced films as well as filmmakers of international repute – does not your comment ignore if not actually insult the pivotal role this institute has played in the history of Indian cinema, in its rich legacy of talent and influence? If you mean that the institute needs to be upgraded we all plea for the same and could not agree more – but why, instead of taking the immediate and necessary action to salvage the crisis in the institute, do you divert the issue into making the institute an elitist and capitalist enterprise which goes against its very grain and idea?
I trust you are already aware of the present issues we are facing here. But briefly to reiterate, if necessary: there are five batches of students presently in the institute, all ironically enrolled into a three-year course, none of whose schedules are running on time. This leads to clashes in terms of schedules and the availability of equipment and studio space, all of which result in further delays and accentuates the problem. There is a lack of personnel to instruct and teach the students, and there is lot to be desired in terms of expertise and capabilities in the meager faculty that are here. The faculty and administration seem to be incapable of making schedules for the projects, workshops and classes of students and ensuring that these schedules are followed. Small unfortunate contingencies, such as the laboratory breaking down or a camera having to be repaired or the need for electricity back up in the face of power cuts, are not attended to promptly, as all initiatives become stuck in a quicksand of bureaucracy with none of the relevant persons taking up responsibility – thus wasting even more precious time and curbing the efforts of students to try and do their work.
Very simply put, the institute is presently dysfunctional.
It is true that students themselves often cause delays because of various reasons, but how can they be expected to have the necessary discipline when the very bodies that are supposed to instill this discipline – the faculty and administration – are so disorganized, inefficient and indifferent that they hamper the initiatives of the students more often than they aid them?! We are all struggling to keep ourselves afloat in the deluge of cynicism that the present state of affairs has brought about.
Yet, despite all this, despite there not being enough hostel space to accommodate the students in a residential course, despite there not even being a consensus of what syllabus should be followed and how, you are admitting a new batch of students into an already sinking institute! This utterly unfair on all of these people, who will waste even more time than us with the problems mounting one on top of the other, who will spend five, six even seven years to complete a three year course, who are not even sure of the quality of the education they will receive here and who are coming blindly because of the heritage of this place, because of its name and the rosy misrepresentations you paint of it everywhere you can while not bothering to make the realities match up.
I am writing now to sincerely request, even plead you to stop this trend, to save the institute and let it live up to its name and true potential. To take action with every means at your disposal and solve the present situation before thinking of taking more students or starting new courses.
Art is the subconscious of the people, it is where we dream and reach to have dialogue both with ourselves and others. It is a free space where we question, acknowledge, celebrate and grow. Without art, a culture would go insane.
Just as we must take care of our own personal health as individuals, both physical as well as mental, it is the responsibility of the government to do the same for the body that it represents. Please do not submit to the pressures of capitalism and globalization at the risk of losing of what is ours, to what has been built with wisdom and care. Please nurture this space instead of giving it up for adoption to parents who will treat it as a money making endeavor. Let the Film and Television Institute of India be what it was supposed to be and has already been for so many years.
Yours sincerely,
Saumyananda Sahi,
1st Year Cinematography,
FTII, Pune
2)
To, 14/11/12
Ms. Ambika Soni,
I&B Ministry,
Union of India.
Madam,
I am a 2nd year student of FTII. I joined the course in the year 2007 and have been here for almost 3 years. In this time, I have come to realise that this issue of disinvestment that surrounds us today has infested this place for over a decade. My understanding of this situation tells me that the core of the problem lies in the way the government looks at this place and in turn, looks at CINEMA.
Film making is an expensive medium and the returns in CERTAIN TYPE OF FILM MAKING are huge. But one must know that this is not the only kind of film making that exists in the country. Even so, it is very easy for a third person (in this case- I&B Ministry/ Union of India) to see this place, involved in training people to make films, as a profit making venture. This has not been the case when it comes to art schools like NSD and Baroda School of Fine Arts. Maybe this is because, theater and painting (which necessarily do not involve big returns) are perceived as an art form and CINEMA is not. It is easy to feel proud of artists like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mani Kaul but difficult to allow conditions that makes their films possible. THAT REQUIRES VISION and CHARACTER.
In the proposal, made by Hewitt at the behest of your ministry for the 'up-gradation of FTII to international standards', refers to FTII as a 'brand'. What this company fails to understand that this 'brand value' it refers to has come into being because of the diploma films that the students of the '3 year subsidized course' have made it in the last 50 years. The other 'self sustained courses' that exist today (with its self sustainence) exists and has any value, if at all, because of these 3 year diploma courses.
The diploma course in its essence inspires films of various aesthetic nature, as the students making them come from all parts of the country and all strata of society. These films made with our humble resources, have represented our nation across the globe for half of a centurry. Dis-investment would lead to this unique diversity of the place that still inspires art, being lost. With its tall free structure, FTII (as your ministry would like to see it) would shut itself to a huge section of the society. The films that come out would be made by a very small section of society and hence would be homogeneous in nature. This itself would kill all possibility of art and subsequently would kill a huge part of alternative cinema that even today represents our films in a respectable light.
Now the decision to look at films as an art forn, the foremost art form of the last century, lies with you/your ministry/ your government. Countries are made with vision, not money. The choice of not letting one of the only two government films schools of this country turn into a money churning machine, lies with you.
Hoping for a reply,
Ruchir arun,
2nd year direction,
FTII.
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